Town Square

Pictures of Resistance Opening Reception

Original post made
by Jan Greenfield, Old Palo Alto,
on Jul 7, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photographs of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman
Oshman Family JCC Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life 3921 Fabian Way , Palo Alto ~ Room E 104
July 14th- August 14th Opening Reception: Thursday July 15th, 2010 6-8pm
Faye Schulman became a war documentarian at grave risk to her own life. During World War II there were approximately 20,000-30,000 Jewish boys and girls who escaped the German ghettos and work camps and formed and joined organized, armed resistance groups. These resistance fighters were called partisans. Faye Schulman was one such partisan.
After the ghetto was liquidated and her family murdered she escaped. Faye Schulman was with the Russian Molatava partisan brigade, whose encampment was near her hometown, of Lenin (formerly Poland) from 1942-1944. Along with serving as a doctor's aid, Schulman also took photographs, developing and printing the two-inch negatives beneath blankets in the forest. Faye Schulman was one of the only  perhaps the only -- Jewish partisan photographer who captured Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.
"Pictures of Resistance" has exhibited in ten cities around the world including Zurich, Switzerland and Tel Aviv, Israel. It continues to draw international acclaim and media attention, bringing JPEF?s work to more and more communities

"Often we hear of Jews as victims, but the stories portrayed in the exhibit spoke of Jews as heroes," said Brandeis graduate student Jessica Levine. "It gave me a new, different Holocaust story to tell, one of resistance and resilience. It made me feel proud to be a Jew."
The exhibition is curated by Jill Vexler, Ph.D. who has extensive experience with Holocaust-related exhibitions, including Letters to Sala: A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps, Remembering Luboml: Images of a Jewish Community, and Oswiecim, Ospitzin, Auschwitz: Portrait of Memories, the permanent exhibition at the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oswiecim, Poland. A filmed interview with Ms. Schulman discussing specific photographs as well as a Teacher/Student Study Guide will be available on the JPEF website, www.jewishpartisans.org.
Since 2000, the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF) has recorded the WWII experiences of brave partisan men and women like Faye Schulman, for use in educational materials, such as study and curriculum guides, teacher trainings, short films narrated by Ed Asner, Larry King, and Tovah Feldshuh, an innovative website, -- and now our first exhibition.
JPEF, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, based in San Francisco, is the only organization in the world that is solely focused on developing material on Jewish partisans. JPEF also serves as the only resource for partisan material for thousands of organizations and institutions across the country.
For more information about the exhibit contact Jan@jewishpartisans.org

Operation Entebbe was a hostage-rescue mission carried out by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 4, 1976.[1] A week earlier, on June 27, an Air France plane with 300 passengers was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and flown to Entebbe, near Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Shortly after landing, all non-Jewish passengers were released.

The IDF acted on intelligence provided by Israeli secret agency Mossad. In the wake of the hijacking by members of the militant organizations Revolutionary Cells and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with the hijackers' threats to kill the hostages if their prisoner release demands were not met, the rescue operation was planned.[2] These plans included preparation for armed resistance from Ugandan military troops.[3]

The operation took place under cover of darkness, as Israeli transport planes carried 100 elite commandos over 2,500 miles (4,000 km) to Uganda for the rescue operation. The operation, which took a week of planning, lasted 90 minutes and 103 hostages were rescued. Five Israeli commandos were wounded and one, commander Netanyahu, was killed. All the hijackers, three hostages and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed, and 11 Russian-built MiG fighters of Uganda's air force were destroyed.[4] A fourth hostage was murdered [5] by Ugandan army officers at a nearby hospital.[6]

On that 200th anniversary of our country, public opinion here turned inward, narcissistically rejecting the concept of collective security learned at such heavy cost in WWII. Better Red than Dead was considered a viable policy, and attacks on our own military were widely approved. Entebbe gave me heart that there were still people who knew and paid the price of freedom.

Don't miss out on the discussion!Sign up to be notified of new comments on this topic.

Email:

Post a comment

Posting an item on Town Square is simple and requires no registration. Just complete this form and hit "submit" and your topic will appear online.
Please be respectful and truthful in your postings so Town Square will continue to be a thoughtful gathering place for sharing community information
and opinion. All postings are subject to our TERMS OF USE, and may be deleted if deemed inappropriate by our staff.

We prefer that you use your real name, but you may use any "member" name you wish.